Oblivion Read online

  EGMONT

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  First published by Egmont USA, 2014

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © Sasha Dawn, 2014

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dawn, Sasha.

  Oblivion / Sasha Dawn.

  1 online resource.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Callie Knowles fights her compulsion to write constantly, even on herself, as she struggles to cope with foster care, her mother’s life in a mental institution, and her belief that she killed her father, a minister, who has been missing for a year.

  Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

  ISBN 978-1-60684-477-9 (EBook) – ISBN 978-1-60684-476-2 (hardcover) [1. Compulsive behavior–Fiction. 2. Mental illness–Fiction. 3. Recovered memory–Fiction. 4. Missing persons–Fiction. 5. Foster home care–Fiction. 6. Dating (Social customs)–Fiction. 7. Illinois–Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D32178

  [Fic]–dc23

  2013021349

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  For Joshua, and the two little ladies who brighten our lives

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Acknowledgments

  “It was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.”

  –SOCRATES

  Lindsey and I left her portable speakers in her backyard shed last week, during the thunderstorm. The Hutches haven’t yet bought us new speakers, so we’re listening to some grungy funk garage band on her cranked-up iPod. The tinny sounds eking through the nano echo, as if a Pink Floyd cover band is singing in a barren, institutional hall, attempting to entertain the crazies locked in a perimeter of padded dorms.

  Instantly, with the image of an antiseptic asylum materializing in my brain, I think of my mother, who belongs in one. At least that’s what the county shrinks tell me. Funny. She seems so sane, so real, sometimes.

  Lindsey’s smoking a joint, and I’m eating a cherry Tootsie Pop. The combination of sugar and contact high is enough for me, as my mind is too cloudy to withstand the numbing effects of inhaled marijuana. It’s hard to focus on reality today, and not only because being in the shed sometimes feels uncomfortable—as if it’s a reminder of something I don’t want to remember. Sometimes, I think I’m losing my faculties. Like mother, like daughter.

  Amputate, amputate, amputate.

  This is how it begins. I fixate on a word until it consumes me. It comes out of nowhere, like a flicker of light on a distant horizon, then waxes and brightens until I see nothing, hear nothing if not the sound of the word, pushing out from the innards of my brain, begging for liberty.

  Amputate.

  Lindsey chokes on her smoke. “You gotta help me write something to Jon.”

  Amputate the cancer.

  John Fogel spells his name with an h, but Lindsey thinks it looks cooler without it. Less is more, she says, although she’s far from a minimalist. Like her parents, Lindsey Hutch doesn’t do anything halfway.

  “I’m talking casual, dude. But something he’ll notice.”

  She calls everyone dude, especially when she’s smoking. It annoyed the hell out of me at first, but after a while, I started feeling a little lost if I ceased to be “dude” to her. In Lindsey-speak, dude is synonymous with kosher, peachy keen, groovy, which, to be fair, are antiquated terms in their own right. But none of that matters to Lindsey. If she doesn’t call people dude, either she doesn’t know them, or she’s pissed off at them. Growing up the way I did, I don’t usually care whether someone’s angry with me or not, but Lindsey isn’t just someone—she’s all I have.

  And I’ve seen her angry. No one wants to be on the receiving end of Lindsey Hutch’s scorn.

  The Hutch family hosts me, or at least that’s the term they use. I prefer to call it like it is: they’re my foster parents, which makes them saints. Not many people would take in a girl like me—a sixteen-year-old bitch who can’t stop writing, can’t stop hooking up with the delinquent she met at County Juvenile Hall, can’t stop thinking her father is gone for one reason: because she killed him.

  My name is Calliope Knowles. I’m a ward of the state of Illinois, and a clinically diagnosed graphomaniac. Unlike my pop-culture counterparts, who claim addiction to blogging on LiveJournals and watch over their Facebook pages, as if God might leave a comment there—imagine: God and seven others like Jenny Anderson’s status—I’m compulsive about writing. This means that I write for the same reason most of us breathe.

  While my disorder is progressive, and therefore expected to become more pronounced as I grow older, there was nothing progressive about the onset of my affliction. I used to be a normal kid. I sneaked drags off cigarettes. Skipped every other page of Hamlet. Crammed two weeks’ worth of studying biology into the night before the test. And, sure, I’d written the occasional line of poetry, when dreaming about some boy I was likely forbidden to look at, let alone kiss; but one day, the day my father disappeared, I started writing, and I couldn’t stop. The words simply would not cease.

  Amputate the cancer, amputate the cancer, amputate the cancer.

  The police found me that day in the apartment above the Vagabond. I hadn’t lived there—no one had—in years. But I’d been hiding there, and that’s where my graphomania emerged, suddenly and viciously, from somewhere deep within my subconscious soul. By the time the police came for me, I’d written on my body, on the mirror, and door. The peeling pink wallpaper had become a canvas I’d filled with tiny, red felt-tip words:

  I killed him, I killed him, I killed him.

  The police had asked me: “Do you know where your father is?”

  No.

  No one had seen him in a day and a half.

  And: “Do you know where Hannah Rynes is?”

  No.

  No one had seen her, either.

  A day and a half.

  Is that how long I’d be
en in that bathroom? How long I’d been awake? It’s a long time to be writing, that’s for certain. There was mud on the door, in the foyer, in the drain, which suggests I’d gone somewhere. Maybe I was out hiding evidence. I wish I could remember.

  The authorities don’t agree with me. They don’t think I killed my father, but they think I know something about his disappearance. If I do, I can’t remember. They think I’m in a perpetual state of shock, that eventually a lightbulb will illuminate the dark recesses of my brain to shed light on the disappearance. Without a body, my father’s case isn’t more than a missing person dossier collecting dust.

  There’s one problem with that, however: twelve-year-old Hannah Rynes disappeared at the same time.

  In a county that boasts less than one non-family-abduction per decade, the coincidence is too great to ignore. If the police find my father, maybe they’ll find Hannah.

  “Nothing obvious, of course,” Lindsey’s saying. “Just something to get the ball rolling.”

  “Got it.”

  My fingers itch for a pen, as the impulse grows stronger, as the words reverberate in my head: folds, folds, folds, folds. Of years.

  “Nothing too cryptic or bookish, either.”

  I pull the lollipop out of my mouth. “From what I can tell, he’s a deep guy. He needs cryptic and bookish.”

  “Yeah, but he has to think I wrote it, genius.”

  Persistent words, begging to be committed to paper, echo in my head: folds of years, folds of years.

  I breathe through the impulse, try to focus on Lindsey.

  If history’s speaking, she’s going to be John’s girlfriend by Halloween. I’m an integral part of this scheme, and it isn’t the first time. I’ve hooked a couple of Lindsey’s prospective boyfriends with my words, and I have to admit I’ve seen this one coming. He’s the only guy she’s consistently talked about since I met her.

  Amputate cancer of the folds of years.

  She’s the closest thing I have to a sister. I’ve lived here with her and her parents for almost six months now. I’d do anything for her. Including snaring an unsuspecting soul like John Fogel.

  “He’s so beautiful.”

  She’s right about that. I’ve caught his gaze a few times, and it’s hard to look away. His eyes … they’re a mesmerizing blue, rimmed with these thick black lashes. And his voice … a clear, confident tenor. Soothing. She’s chosen a good one to obsess over, that’s for sure.

  Lindsey brings the joint, which by now is more roach than blunt, to her lips for a sharp inhale. The smoke encircles her head. Her aqua/green eyes blaze until they become gems amidst the haze. Her voice trails off, down a long corridor in my mind, overpowered by the words pounding against my brain, stretching out of their cocoons for liberty.

  Amputate cancer of the folds of years. Does the scent of her linger within you? Tempt her, tempt her, tempt her.

  “Callie—”

  Lindsey’s calling to me, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. The words nearly vibrate. What’s starting as a dull ache between my eyes will soon become a vise at my temples. Can’t delay any longer. I need a pen. There’s one in my backpack. I know there is. It’s always there. For emergencies.

  I’m fiddling with the zipper, but already the pressure in my head pinches, stabs, distorts my vision. Lindsey helps me to force the zipper over the lump that is my calculus text.

  Where’s my notebook?

  Lodged under my textbooks. Can’t get it out. Snagged.

  Tears well in my eyes, as I frantically divert my search to the red Bic—felt-tipped, of course—swimming at the bottom of my school bag. At last, I grasp it, fumbling over simple pronunciation of even simpler words—“think, thunk, tanku”—and press the tip to my jeans:

  Amputate cancer of the folds of years does the scent of her linger within you tempt her break her make her feel real devour her when she begins to bleed bleed bleed bleed her and feed.

  A teardrop splats against a bleed, jarring the force in my head, silencing it, shaking me free, if only for the moment. I focus on the memory of Elijah. He always had an uncanny ability to bring me back to earth, and sometimes, if I think of him, the anxiety wanes and the words disappear. I breathe.

  I draw in a deep inhalation, and slowly glance in Lindsey’s direction. The first time this happened in her company, I was mortifyingly embarrassed, but now, six months later, it’s old hat. Not affected, she’s sitting with one ankle crossed over her knee, picking at the dried mud in the sole of her grape-purple, knee-high Converse All Stars, while the roach burns dangerously close to her fuchsia-tipped fingernails. When she finally acknowledges me, it’s with a steady stare, followed by a minute shake of her head.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Take the meds already, will ya?”

  Ah, yes. The meds. Nothing kills one’s passion for living like antianxiety medication. “I flushed it.”

  She brings the joint to her lips and breathes in the fumes. “Cool.”

  I haven’t seen Elijah for a few weeks, and suddenly, the need to see him overcomes me. If he’s lucky, he’s long gone from his new foster family by now, but I hope he’ll be back to the harbor tonight. It’s a Tuesday. He promised.

  He’s stuck with some host family, like me, bound by rules and expectations. Structure. That’s what the court-appointed shrinks call it. And maybe they’re right. But to people like Elijah, this cushy existence of square meals and therapy sessions is more confining than a jail cell. It’s hard to cage a butterfly who’s been free to flutter his entire life.

  Lindsey rests her head against my shoulder. “Dude, I’m stoned.”

  “I know.” I press a kiss to the crown of her head, directly atop a zigzag part, which divides her jet-black hair into two spiky ponytails. “Will you tell your mom I’m volunteering tonight?” Lindsey’s parents don’t require us to work regular jobs, but we’re encouraged to do charity work.

  “Don’t go to the marina.”

  “I have to. It’s Tuesday.”

  “Don’t come home crying to me if he’s not there again.”

  “Fine, I won’t.”

  Her eyes roll up to engage mine. “You’re better than this, you know.”

  Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am. But I’m addicted to Elijah the way Lindsey’s addicted to pot. Besides, ever since the day the cops pulled me out of that dingy apartment and stuffed me into a dorm at County Juvenile Hall, he’s been there for me. He’s the only person I completely trusted at County, and he’s the only person, next to Lindsey, I trust now. Unlike Lindsey, he knows everything there is to know about me. He understands me like no one else can. After all, he’s spent time at County, too.

  “You gonna write something to Jon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No h.”

  “I know. I’ll remember.”

  Her arms lazily drape over my shoulders. “I love you.”

  She loves everyone when she’s high.

  When I leave a few minutes later, I close the creaking door behind me.

  Lindsey’s singing off-key.

  Before she went away, and for most of my childhood, my mother waited tables at the Vagabond Café. This was in the days when the establishment was more a coffeehouse than a bar, when it was populated with an artistic clientele, when it appeared fresher than it does today. But the drunken yachters didn’t instill the stench of musty buoys and lake when they chased away the beatniks. The Vagabond has always smelled this way; the scent encompasses my earliest memories: three-year-old me watching in awe from the corner table as the minstrels and poets entertained one another. Breathing in the scent of the Chain of Lakes and biscotti while Mom read Tarot—which she didn’t believe in, but understood to the extent that it garnered her a paycheck—on Saturday nights. Traipsing up the stairs to the apartment with heavy eyes to catch a few winks before being dragged off to the Church of the Holy Promise come sunrise.

  This is the first place I remember writing, albeit I wrote for
the sheer pleasure of it in those days. The tables inside are littered with poetic graffiti. Carved into tables are classic lines of Keats and Dickens, as well as witty and fresh creations of the local clientele. I wonder if my words are still visible atop table number fourteen. I see them in my mind’s eye:

  Travel on, yellow brick road … wind her past throughout her soul.

  The Vagabond is nearer the more affluent towns along the Chain. It’s close enough to the Hutches’ neighborhood that I can walk, but it’s a train ride away from Holy Promise. This minute distance—it’s only about fifteen miles—stands out to me now that I’m older: Mom saw this place as an escape. Just far enough away from the ties binding her, far enough away from Palmer Prescott and his version of the word of God. Far enough to breathe.

  I suppose this is why I think of my mother whenever I’m in proximity to the harbor, and tonight she won’t leave my mind. I close my hand around the tiny golden ring with the marquise ruby, slung on a chain around my neck. The ring is one of the few items that still connects me to my mother. She gave it to me when I was very small. And sometimes, if I press the ring to my flesh, I can almost remember the comfort of her touch. It’s been months since I’ve seen her, but I have the sneaking suspicion she isn’t keeping track of our visits.

  Much like Elijah.

  It’s a chilly night for the middle of September. Uncommonly cool, even for the lakeshore. I didn’t bring a jacket, partly because having one would jinx my chances of warming up in Elijah’s arms, partly because I look damn good in this T-shirt. It’s pink, a scoop-necked, snug fit. It sports the belief that Lennon Lives and more cleavage than I can muster on my own, thanks to Lindsey’s Victoria’s Secret plunge bra.

  I rub my palms up and down my arms to ward off the nip in the breeze, and gaze down the rickety piers flanked with silvery waves at the Vagabond. Its vertical siding is painted dirty white and peeling. The mauve and mint shutters, unlike most in this area, are not solely ornamental, as they open and close over mullioned, wavy glass windows, perpetually filthy with droplets of lake. The shutters are open tonight, but probably only because no one’s had time to close them, as the wait staff is busy attending to the swarming crowd inside. The front porch gives the place a distinctly shanty presence—very bayou meets the Midwest—and if I gaze at it long enough, I fail to see the weathering of the old joint. Sometimes the Vagabond is just as majestic in my mind as it was in its heyday.